Death Disco 2012
May. 9th, 2012 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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arbitrary_greay. Also, the Dead Lester thread is getting close to where LiveJournal does that horrible thing of collapsing subthreads on us, so if you have any more responses to what's on that thread, I suggest you do so on this one.
arbitrary_greay. Also, the Dead Lester thread is getting close to where LiveJournal does that horrible thing of collapsing subthreads on us, so if you have any more responses to what's on that thread, I suggest you do so on this one.
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always loved this one
Date: 2012-05-10 04:12 am (UTC)Saw PiL at Barcelona Primavera last year around this time -- really weird show. It was the second(?) opening set of the night at the festival which meant they came on at 8pm and no one was dancing or reacting. Then you had two completely different sets of people go nuts for two completely separate songs.
Re: always loved this one
Date: 2012-05-10 04:35 am (UTC)Re: always loved this one
Date: 2012-05-10 03:00 pm (UTC)I have to say that everyone loosened up considerably by "Warrior," but it was 9pm by that point. Also, "Warrior" just rocks, period. That was the one I most enjoyed hearing, and I didn't expect it, because I didn't know it'd been a single.
Don't call it a new thread; I been here for years
Date: 2012-05-10 03:07 pm (UTC)Anyway, let's talk sustained intellectual conversation, without assuming the body of the last post was trying to do the work of articulating what that was. (Generally, I think I have a handle on the broad strokes of the complaint, from the 80s to now.) The problem, as I understand it, is that rock critics as a class can't seem to sustain an intellectual conversation, despite the fleeting potential of individuals to sustain a conversation over days, weeks, months, even years. So there may be some kind of Kogan = Krugman and Eddy = DeLong formulation at play in the rockcrit world, but the problem is that there isn't this general space (like "economics") where ideas are intended to be tested according to agreed-upon rules of conversation and understanding. And without those rules, when conversations do begin, participants can't seem to see (or perhaps care about) an "end" (even if the end just means "we have a better incomplete understanding than our previous near-zero understanding") and simply give up before any new understanding or knowledge is created. Is that right?
Re: Don't call it a new thread; I been here for years
Date: 2012-05-10 08:10 pm (UTC)Re: Don't call it a new thread; I been here for years
Date: 2012-05-10 09:46 pm (UTC)even though there are indeed models and assumptions for how to do economics that Krugman and DeLong share, that doesn't explain why we are having such a tough time
Which is where I'm stuck.
Re: Don't call it a new thread; I been here for years
Date: 2012-05-11 05:13 pm (UTC)I suppose you could attempt to perform analysis and form models of music content based on theory and songwriting techniques. How many songs use a certain structure, etc.
In terms of discussing music content as far as its resonance on the listener, which is entirely subjective, you could approximate an objective analysis through survey-based data collection and then identifying common themes, which is what happens for the peer-reviewed journal articles. Speaking of which, how do you consider the quality of those? Or are those too isolated to count as conversations, even if they have laundry lists of references to other articles?
Re: Don't call it a new thread; I been here for years
Date: 2012-05-12 03:24 am (UTC)An example from my own practice -- we have a measure called "active reasoning," which literally is a measure of how children write about the music, TV, movies, etc. they like. It's a "0" or "1" measure. If students write something reactive ("it's funny" or "it's cool" or "I like it"), they get a "0"; if they write something relating to the construction of the media ("it has a good beat" or "I like that the message is 'never give up'") they get a "1."
What this measure mostly tells us is that students who score well on standardized reading and writing assessment also tend to use more "active reasoning responses." But as an observer of kid behavior, I also know that when a kid says "I like that! It's so cool!" there may be depths of analysis happening that the student simply can't articulate yet (especially in writing, which is in many ways a separate measure).
I don't think survey data has really told us much about the "guts" of taste -- much of it is tainted before it begins with the assumptions it brings to texts it uses in the first place, as in Bordieu's experiments with music and social class, which explores what (e.g.) working class respondents listen to and then analyzes it without asking good questions about "how" and "why" of those respondents' listening habits of the respondents themselves (very difficult using survey methods). Or when someone codes "My Humps" as "highly sexualized" and then uses it in an argument like "kids respond positively to highly sexualized music." More of it just can't say very interesting things in the format. Free response, interview, and ethnographic observations get you something else entirely, and ethnography and anthropology are sets of practices that I think lots of music critics, myself included, would do well to think more about even when approaching their "home" tastes.
That's something that keeps me returning to music criticism, as messy and sporadic as it often feels. The flashes of analysis, insight, and feeling that emerge in it are often far closer to what I seem to "get" out of music than what data tells me about (e.g.) group behavior. Duncan Watts's recent experiments are very useful in tracking social behavior, but he's not judging anything about what people say to themselves about popular music they like, merely observing which songs are popular in particular settings and how popularity spreads. (And he argues more forcefully in his books, Six Degrees and Everything Is Obvious, that it's a serious error to try to read any individual motivations into these group behaviors.)
Re: Don't call it a new thread; I been here for years
Date: 2012-05-12 03:35 am (UTC)I would say that this is a community that can certainly sustain an intellectual conversation. But I also think that the conversation itself has huge issues, problematic questions, etc. But there are regular conferences, journals, departments, etc. etc. that are devoted to sustaining the conversation, such as it is.
To me rock criticism has the opposite problem; there are tons of great insights and ideas, lots of intellectuals contributing various bits of knew knowledge; and these people often come from strange places and can be wildly interdisciplinary. Some of the best books and pieces on music I've ever read come from neurobiology, history, musicology, media and cultural studies, journalism, network theory, and fiction. Over time, the isolation of all of these voices and ideas takes its toll on the field, which, especially in a time when funding is being systematically slashed and academic silos get paranoid about letting outsiders in, feels disparate and unsatisfying, despite its bright spots.
I return to my rock critic haunts out of a mix of nostalgia (reactive: "it's cool") and expectation that something will surprise me, if not always in the writing than at least in the music under the microscope (or being left out of the microscope, or whatever) -- sometimes especially when I'm not being surprised in the places people are supposed to be providing insights and discoveries. (Ashlee Simpson can activate me to be a better intellectual than almost anything anyone has ever written on Ashlee Simpson.)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 06:15 pm (UTC)"But the time and money thing does relate closely to why so few people take sustained intellectual effort seriously -- that is, why "sustain an intellectual conversation" isn't something that anyone wants to do -- there's nothing "in it" for them."
No. This is like saying the "rent and employment thing" relates closely to why so few people want to write 900-word novels; it's incredibly condescending and, quite frankly, offensive.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 07:57 pm (UTC)"Sustain an intellectual conversation," as I understand it, is a concerted individual and collaborative effort that in part requires incentives and in part requires the right "space" and "rules," both in quotation marks. What's missing is not only the incentives (rent-paying), but also a consensus for how such conversations can happen, which may be lacking because so few people can get together in a way that makes "sustain an intellectual conversation" a priority. There's no "field." There's no
Maura and Katherine, it is not either of your "jobs" to sustain an intellectual conversation. Nor are either of you personally incapable of doing it, not by a long shot, and if this is how you've interpreted what I've been saying, then I should re-phrase it or reiterate my meaning. But it is true that there aren't models of sustained intellectual conversation within rock criticism, and the question is "why not?" -- "because no one will pay me" might be a valid reason, but the question here is whether it is the only reason.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 09:41 pm (UTC)And usually in the case of a regular workday's aftermath, I read through the discussion/reply, and some thoughts may even start churning in my brain in response, but most of the time I will lack the energy to organize them or track down the references I'm thinking of, much less start writing down the thoughts with wording to my satisfaction.
At least, not while there's more immediate gratification aspects of fandom still out there. (ie consumption of fandom materials rather than producing) Not to mention the good replies usually take an hour to write and even more to track down the references as I let myself wiki walk during the latter. Three to five hours on a single response while the rest of fandom marches on? I'll leave it to the weekend. And then the weekend arrives, and I've got non-fandom activities planned away from internet, and then fandom has marched on and there's even more material to consume...
no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 10:20 pm (UTC)I think the problem is the assumption that if you don't have the time/resources, you must not be "getting enough out of the intellectual conversation" (joy in discovery, etc.) to prioritize it over your current use of time/resources, and thus you can't really be taking it seriously. Which, yes, can come across as pretty condescending. I don't think it's what Dave means, although it's a standard way academics and un-/under-employed deep thinkers can condescend to the employed. :P
Personally, I make no bones about it: I'm very scattered in my interests and have a remunerative and time-sucking day job. Nine times out of ten, I do deprioritize intellectual conversation because relatively speaking, there's less in it for me than something else I could be doing. But I barely play a critic on the Internet, let alone am one - I've merely reached the point where I want to measure my non-fiction writing against pro standards rather than amateur ones. The only thing I feel bad about is leaving the other person(s) in the conversation hanging, not whether I'm taken seriously.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 07:58 pm (UTC)x-post.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 01:28 pm (UTC)http://katherinestasaph.tumblr.com/post/22839312534/a-fourth-comment-got-deleted-luckily-i-have-been
Apology to Katherine
Date: 2012-05-12 05:34 am (UTC)Again, my apology for being so fast on the trigger.
Re: Apology to Katherine
Date: 2012-05-12 08:58 am (UTC)What intellect!
Date: 2012-05-11 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 10:11 pm (UTC)Okay, seriously though, what is an "intellectual conversation"? Maybe that message doesn't get felt because nobody knows what the fuck "[seeing] a new world each time you look, each time you act, but only by thinking, testing, challenging, re-wording and re-phrasing" is. What are you even asking people to do?
no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 06:42 pm (UTC)It makes sense. Humming the "main melody" of Beethoven's 5th would sound incomprehensible, but it can be done with "Stars and Stripes Forever."
"Give It Up Or Turn It Loose"
I guess this is a return to form, where then's a theme and a structure developed around the theme?
Death Rock 2000
"What Ya Want" is, I think, a salsa rhythm, a 4/4 with definite downbeats on 1 and 3, and everything else up for play. (often counted in eighths like "1 2 3 -, 5 6 7 -") Not quite a polyrhythm like I first thought it was, but polyrhythm does not inherently cause disruption, either.
When you wrote about the disruption in rhythm between melody and arrangement, were you speaking about it being novel for pop/mainstream music?
The first thing I thought of while listening to "What Ya Want" was Bernstein's fusion of latin and jazz rhythms and his own rhythm playground of a classical style (as popularized by Copeland) in West Side Story, which, as it was originally a Broadway musical, involved an interplay of melodies, both vocal and instrumental, and arrangement. The entirety of the "Symphonic Dances" version seems to "refuse to honor the measure bars and the main beats," and there are moments where there seems to be no one line of "melody," as the focus jumps gleefully from one line to another, or runs two simultaneously--similar to the way you described Destiny's Child's music.
I'm also reminded my how my sister's violin teach was joking about how everyone thinks that Bernstein's rhythms are hard, but are easy for him because he's Bulgarian.
Swan Lake
Doesn't bother me. The "Swan Lake" elements in the song are minor, a short phrase that is by no means the main focus of the piece, not trying to evoke the feel of the original ballet at all.
Here's another instance of where a classical reappropriation doesn't bother me.
And furthermore
Date: 2012-05-12 05:54 am (UTC)As for when or if I intend to elaborate on that original post: I don't know.